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How to JOIN quilting block swaps Australia

Hello and thank you for visiting. This is a community group for all Australian quilters to join or just follow. Membership is FREE and you are partnered each month and we make each other a 12 inch quilt block based on our preferences which we swap. (12.5 inches raw edge to raw edge) The emphasis of the group is on friendship and sharing. To find out more or register to join email me onquiltingblocks@hotmail.comThis purpose of this blog is to chat and showcase blocks and quilts made by members, kind of like a show and tell . Yours in stitching, Sue

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Friendship quilt in the making - part 2

sewing on the sashes

Tonight I have been busy sewing on the sashes and joining the blocks into rows. I have added in a block that I made which gives me 16 blocks to work with so I will make a square quilt with 4 rows of 4. Then with borders it would be like a Queen bed topper.

sashes 1/2 done

Lots of unpicking along the way

There was quite a bit of frustration and unpicking along the way due to not all of the blocks being the same size. This give me the opportunity to mention to all ladies participating in the swap to try and get your finished blocks as close to 12.5 inches raw edge to raw edge as you possibly can. I am new to swapping too and I am the first to admit that I have made and sent a block too small, until it was pointed out to me.

uneven join

Generally in quilting when a pattern tells you a block size this is allowing for the 1/4 inch seam allowance but not always so you will have to add this on. Before you cut your fabric do a quick mathematic caluclation of one edge of the block to check that it adds up to 12.5 inches, In this quilt I had a couple of blocks about 1/2 inch short of this, and a couple about 1/2 inch too big. When they are too big you can trim a little, or resew a seam a bit more, but when they are too small even with scant seams and stretching it makes it very hard (so better to be too big than too small).

I didnt think to check the block sizes before I got to the step of sewing each row together and then found out the hard way that the vertical strips did not line up. I unpicked and re-sewed several times to try and get them to match up and this was the best I could do.

As it turns out the worst of the uneven seams is in the centre of the quilt so I have decided that I will put a label over this join with the name of all the contributors in the making of the quilt on that. This will hide the join and not make it as obvious.

More postings soon as I add the borders. I am not going to show a pic of the whole quilt until it is completed - so you will all have to wait for that one.